A

Diary of Public Events

and

Notices of My Life and Family

and

Of My Private Transactions

Studies, Travels, Readings

From

January 1st, 1845

to

August, 1845

and

Sketch of my Life from Infancy

by

Samuel Hervey Laughlin

In April, 1845, Samuel Hervey Laughlin wrote, "Those were pleasant days---their memory is full of sweet melancholy---and I pen these events here, knowing that no eyes but those of my children, grandchildren, or those who will hold my memory in equal respect, will ever see what I now write. I wish my father or grandfathers had written and left just such free, unreserved, and full memoirs, however badly or hastily written."

Mr. Laughlin comprehended the importance, to following generations, of the accounts of an individual's daily life and personal activities. Such information often fills a void for historians and those trying to gain an in depth understanding of past events and circumstances.

This diary was transcribed by Anabel Easley Tidwell, a direct descendant of Samuel Hervey Laughlin, and her daughter-in-law, Janet Malone Tidwell. It is their hope that in reading these pages their children and grandchildren, and any other interested parties, will have a greater understanding and appreciation for the life and times of this illustrious gentleman.

A Diary, Etc. for the year 1845-

Introduction

In the year 1834, commencing in the month of December, during a journey from Nashville, Tennessee, where I then lived to Washington City, made for the purpose of concluding arrangements for the establishment of a newspaper at Nashville, to be called "The Union", I commenced and kept a journal of my travels, embracing remarks on political events, discussions, notes of consultations etc. which is preserved among my books and papers, bound up with a similar diary kept during my journey to the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore in May 1840, and also notes made during my journey to the Baltimore Convention of 1844, by which J. K. Polk was nominated as a canidate for the Presidency. These former diaries and journals I refer to as containing my notes and remarks on men and events, and my personal participation in the several transactions to which they relate. They also contain in separate diaries (but bound together) of my participation in the legislative measures of the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, at its several sessions from October 1839 to perhaps January, 1844, I having served in the State Senate from the district first composed of the counties of Warren, Franklin, and portions of the new counties of Coffee, Cannon, DeKalb, and Van Buren, and subsequently under the new apportionment of 1841-2 of the counties of Warren, Cannon, Coffee, DeKalb, and the territory now composing Grundy County. In 1839, at the instance and on petition of Uriah York, Wm. Armstrong as a surveyor, and of three or four hundred citizens living on Caney Fork of Cumberland, Rocky River, CaneCreek, etc. I procured the new county of Van Buren to be established, and, as there were then a majority of democratic members in both branches of the Assembly, I had the honor of giving the name of Mr. Van Buren to it; and the Seat of Justice, Spencer, was named by Mr. Samuel Turney, a Senator from White County. In 1843-4 on the petition of large numbers of citizens living on the head of the Elk River, Hickory Creek, Collins River, and Cumberland Mountain, I assisted zealously in the State Senate in getting Grundy County established, and by my pertinacious perserverance, got it named after my old and valued friend, Felix Grundy, who had died in November 1840, while holding the appointment of Senator in Congress, which I had aided in bestowing upon him in the winter of 1840, and in inducing him to resign the office of Attorney General of the U.S. which he then held under an appointment from President Van Buren. In May, 1840, as a member of the Baltimore Convention, he had aided powerfully by his wise counsels and eloquence, in producing harmony in that body, resulting in the unanimous nomination of Mr. Van Buren for re-election to the Presidence, and a unanimous agreement to nominate no democratic candidate for the Vice Presidency. This was done to produce harmony. Col. Johnson desired a re-nomination. In Tennessee, in the Assembly in 1839, I had introduced, and the democracy had carried a legislative nomination of Mr. Van Buren and Col. James K. Polk for these high offices. When the convention was about to meet, to prevent all collisions of claims, Col. Polk magnanimously withdrew his name-but these matters are all noted in the diaries referred to and form only a digression and brief repetition here. One word, however, in regard to Mr. Grundy before I proceed with this introduction. In the recess of Congress in 1840, he labored incessantly in public discussions and in speeches in favor Mr. Van Bursn's re-election. He returned home from Washington in the spring and early summer, after congress adjourned. Through Virginia and East Tennessee, by way of Abingdon, Knoxville, McMinnville, etc. to Nashville, accompanied by Hon. Hopkins L. Turney, and Harvey M. Waterson, they being representatives in Congress, he made speeches to the people (Mr. T. & W. doing the same) at nearly every town and place of public note on the whole route. At McMinnville, my county town, my residence being at Hickory Hill, one mile distant from it, these gentlemen, Mr. Grundy leading, all made speeches to a very large and attentive assembly of people, including many ladies. This was in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Mr. G. although indisposed, laboring under an invetorate derangement of the bowels, made one of the happiest efforts I have ever heard him make. I had been in the habit of hearing Mr. Grundy at the Bar and in the Assembly, and before the people, and then more recently in Congress from the fall of 1815, when I removed from McMinnville to Murfreesboro for the purpose of concluding my studies, and engaging in the practice of law. After I came to the Bar, and had been elected Attorney General, at the very outset of my professional career, in 1817, I was thrown into constant professional and social intercourse with him. He honored me thus early with his confidence and friendship, and it continued without abatement-in fact greatly increased on both our parts-up to the day of his death. He was a really great man. He never was a hard student as far as reading books was concerned, but he read men-he understood men at first sight, as if by intuition, better than any man I have ever known. He was in another sense an intense student. He was more in the habit of what Mr. Wirt, in the British Spy denominates "Close and solid thinking", than was known generally, even to his most intimate friends. In the progress of the trial of great causes in court, especially criminal cases, his habit was to take but very brief notes of leading facts and points. When the court would adjourn over to the next day, Mr. Grundy was always among the first to leave the court room, and retire to his lodgings, and from that moment until after tea or supper, he mingled with every person about him in all manner of cheerful conversation, telling anecdotes which he did inimitably, and in hearing and joining in the heartiest laughs at those told by others. He always seemed to have forgotten the cause in hand, even if it were one of life and death. But after this relaxation, and eating temperately, he immediately retired to his room. He generally preferred to have some friend with him in his room at all times. On such occasions, I have no doubt, I have spent a hundred nights in his room, rooming together during the fifteen or sixteen years we attended courts from our respective homes together. If the weather were cold, he always, if the beds were large enough, preferred sleeping together. After going to his room, unless some indispensable consulation prevented, he was always the first to propose going to bed, and he always had the unusual and extraordinary power, by abstracting all his thoughts, of going to sleep in two or three minutes after the time came when he chose to sleep. Going to bed, and to sleep this early, and always sleeping soundly, he usually awoke about one o'clock in the morning. It was then, and not until then, that he commenced the intense and profound study and preparation of his case, and arranged in his own mind, all the heads of the speech he had to make the next day, or before the case closed. If the trial lasted three or four days, as many important cases, civil as well as criminal often did, this nightly task of study and preparation was regularly taken up every night, but always with more care and system the night before he had to deliver his argument. Even in chancery cases, after the reading of all papers and records and notes taken of dates, leading points fixed and concluded by proofs and depositions, he made the same nocturnal preparation. Even the splendid sentences, and occasional poetical or classical quotations by which he embellished his speeches before juries, were thus prepared, perfectly committed to memory-and nothing committed to his memory was ever lost or forgotten-and the order and connection in which he would introduce them were all thus arranged and prepared. To me, for a great many years, he made no secret of his art. To those who heard him in court, and saw him scarcely ever looking at or taking a note unless it were in the conclusion of a speech, where he would occasionally turn over and look at his notes, out of abundant caution for fear the warmth of debate had caused him to overlook some fact or authority, I say, to the lookers-on, all this appeared perfectly extempore, when in fact it was the effect of cautious and careful preparation. Such, however, was the exuberance of his splendid imagination and the excellence of his memory, that upon thousands of occasions, upon incidental points arriving, offhand, and altogether extempore, he made many of his most masterly speeches, both for eloquence and argument. Scarcely any many ever lived who needed the discipline and preparation to which he schooled himself, less than he did. But he felt it to be a duty to his client, to his causes and himself, lest by a more careless method, he might perchance omit some argument or some ground which would be beneficial to his cause. In all cases, when the proofs were all submitted, he saw at once, with perfect intuition, the very point-or the several points-always few however-upon which the cause must turn. To fortify and maintain these, throwing all extransous matters to the winds, was his method. Hence, generally, his speeches were not labored or very long-never apparently too long or too short. The great controlling faculty of his mind was his profound and clear judgement. He was embued with a greater share-always ready and always at hand-of common sense than any man I was ever acquainted with. The man nearer to him in this respect, whom I have known, is his favorite pupil and friend, James K. Polk, the present President of the United States.

Mr. Grundy by his labors in the public cause of democracy, in which he believed the best interests of his country were at hazard, during the presidential canvass of 1840-his traveling to distant places, over-fatiguing himself-and neglecting the constant disordered state of his stomach and bowels-caused the disease to become so permanently seated that he was compelled at length to retire to his own house and shortly to be confined to his own room. He was still cheerful, apprehending no immediate danger, although he suffered much, and had become considerably emaciated and enfeebled. He still took a lively interest in the pending contest, and all his regrets were occasioned by the madness, folly, ribaldry, and infatuation of the Whigs and people misled by them, under their false professions and promises, and their ridiculous emblems of coons, canoes on dry land and other absurdities. He continued, however, to grow worse and worse, and weaker and weaker, until his kind physicians, Drs. Saml. Hogg and Felix Robertson-two of his oldest and best friends-despaired of his life. He was surrounded by a most affectionate family, and his excellent wife-the beloved wife of his youth-were unremitting in ministering to all his comforts. At last, it was foreseen that he must die, He was in his perfect mind, and believed so himself. One of his physicians, while he pressed his hand, and with eyes suffused with tears and a choked voice, whispered kindly to him that they had concluded it to be their duty to tell him as a Christian man that he could not live much longer. He returned the pressure of the hand, and said calmly, the Lord's will, not mine, be done. This was nearly the last words he uttered.

After his death, in winter of 1843-4, at the request of Mrs. Grundy, Mr. William W. Bass, his son-in-law, consulted me, and put into my hands various drafts of inscriptions to be put on a monument which they had bespoke in Philadelphia, and which was nearly completed except for the inscription. One was by Mr. Silas Wright, now Governer of New York, with whom Mr. Grundy had served long in the Senate of the United States, and the other, intended for a different side of the monument, or rather cenotaph, by Mr. Bass himself. I made copies of both at Hickory Hill, adding some points in the public life of Mr. Grundy, which I obtained from Marshall's and Butler's histories of Kentucky, which had escaped the recollection of Mr. Wright and Mr. Bass. With these additions, the inscriptions may now be read on the monument at the public burial ground, near Nashville, where Mr. Grundy's remains repose. Prior to his death, from about the year 1822, Mr Grundy had been a professing Christian, and member of the Presbyterian church. Dr. Edgar, of Nashville, his Pastor for whom he had a warm regard, preached his funeral sermon which was published at the time, but the worthy Doctor, not being either eloquent or a man of literature, it fell very far short of doing justice to the great man in whose honor it was delivered.

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